On This, the Anniversary of the King’s Death

“You are either a Beatles person or an Elvis person,” was a phrase I remember hearing for the first time in high school. I was in that golden age of teenage years when music changes the way you see everything and so you are compelled to have very strong opinions about it. For me, the answer has never changed over the years. I am an Elvis person. I would listen to “Love Me Tender” over the chirpy “I Want to Hold Your Hand” any day of the week. But honestly if you try to compare Elvis to anyone else, I am always going to go with the Rt. Rev. Presley.

When my near deaf great-grandmother was dying in the hospital during what, I am sure, was a hot Louisiana August in the summer of 1977, someone managed to communicate to her that Elvis had died. Family lore is that she immediately perked up and said, “Elvis died! Nobody told me that Elvis had died! What else am I missing?!” I was born in 1982 and Ethel Gandy would go on to live until 1987. I always credit Elvis with my being able to meet and know her.

I was indoctrinated into the cult of Elvis early. My mother used to play his records in the living room and we would all boogy. Going to Graceland was like a holy pilgrimage. And I can clearly remember hearing my parents discuss the injustices done to Mr. Presley by his infamous manager, Colonel Tom Parker. “He just insisted Elvis do all of those movies where he had to sing,” my mother would say. “Elvis could have been a great actor without the Colonel interfering,” my dad would chime in.

And so when conversations arose about what my parents would name my brother, there was a sophisticated line of thought that said his name, Aaron, was for the composer Aaron Copeland. But also, we had to collectively admit, it was also a lovely nod to Elvis Aaron Presley.

I love the entire songbook of Elvis’s work. His early work is freedom on a record. To hear someone in the pent up days of 1956 belt out “Good Rockin’ Tonight” must have been a life altering experience:

I said, meet me and a-hurry behind the barn

Don’t you be afraid ‘cause I’ll do you no harm

I want you to bring along my rockin’ shoes

‘Cause tonight I’m gonna rock away all our blues

I heard the news, there’s good rockin’ tonight.

Elvis. Stop. I’m blushing and it is 2016.

For reasons that should be obvious, I love his Gospel music recordings. My grandmother used to stand at the kitchen sink, washing dishes, humming along to his gorgeous How Great Thou Art album. If you only listen to one Elvis song on this, the anniversary of his death, it has to be “Crying in the Chapel.”

But even when Elvis got on in years, and the weight came with the jumpsuits, and the drugs really began to take their toll, even that Elvis I adore. Perhaps, in our family, we adore that Elvis even more. Because for us, Elvis was much more than just his music. We loved him because he looked and sounded like us. His landmarks were our landmarks. He built a gaudy house in Memphis, Tennessee and moved his parents in as soon as he made it big. He bought an airplane and named it after his daughter, Lisa Marie. He had a daughter named Lisa Marie. That man was our kind of people, in sickness and in health.

We loved him because his life was one of the first celebrity lives to be so tragically and so publicly lived out. His story was not one of victory but of tremendous and embarrassing defeat. For all of his unbelievable accomplishments and staggering career, there is still the story of his wasted talent, infidelity, divorce, addiction, and his death on a toilet, of all things. He was arguably one of the most famous people to completely lose control of his life in front of everyone. And, at least in my family, we loved him for it.

When I heard the stories of this King as we gathered around my childhood dinner table, they were not tales of shame or judgment. Talking about Elvis Presley was never seen as a morality moment when we learned that drugs were bad and that fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches were not heart healthy. There was not even a solid he-found-Jesus moment at the end of his life.

We told the story of Elvis around the dinner table because it was beautiful and tragic. Even if you are not from Mississippi, even if you have not toured the Jungle Room at Graceland, even if you are, in fact, a Beatles person, you can still look to Brother Elvis for a word about how we cannot outrun ourselves. Like so many people we know, and like we ourselves have experienced, life will break you. And Elvis broke in front of everyone. God bless him for that.

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I have this very website to thank for getting heavily into Elvis recently. I’m a former record store manager and total snob about music – the annoying “High Fidelity” kind who figures that if it’s worth knowing about than I already know about it! But, lo and behold, I downloaded an mp3 of “Let Us Pray Together” after reading Mockingbird Issue #1 and got hooked. Now I have two massive Elvis song shuffle playlists on my iPod (Elvis 50’s/Early 60’s and Elvis 60’s/Early 70’s) that I listen to in between the ridiculous number of over-priced indie and heavy metal vinyl records that I’m constantly buying. Pre-Mockingbird, the extent of my Elvis listening was limited to that (pretty great) “Elvis 56” CD that came out in 1996. Now, I love pretty much ALL the Elvis. Thanks Mockingbird for making this pompous music snob happy (and humbled) with discovery! (By the way, I decided that “Anything That’s Part Of You” may be the saddest, most pathetic song ever. And likely the foundation for about 90% of Morrissey’s catalog.)

For all of Presley’s unbelievable accomplishments and staggering career, says writer Sarah Condon and I quote, “there is still the story of his wasted talent, infidelity, divorce, addiction, and his death on a toilet, of all things” Unquote. He then adds, that and I quote “he was arguably one of the most famous people to completely lose control of his life in front of everyone. And, at least in my family, we loved him for it” Now, talking about accomplishments, Here’s three reasons why people should love him neither having anything to do with his profession i) On October 28, 1956, age 21, he was inoculated with the third version of Jonas Salk’ polio vaccine, the first two had failed, even causing regrettable deaths, and he did so in front of the international press, the almost immediate result being the exponential increase in the immunization level across the US, from 0.6% to 80% in the next six months, By April of 1957, the Salk Institute announced ´polio had all but been erradicated from US soil. ii) On January 6, 1957, two days short of his 22nd birthday, he asked CBS host Ed Sullivan to request, on his behalf, that emergency assistance be made available to the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Hungary as a result of the double invasion by the Soviet Union the previous 24th and 31st October. He also dedicated a gospel song to them, and by the end of 1957, some US$6 million (the equivalent of US$49.5 in today’s dollars) had been received by the International Red Cross in Geneva, which distributed the perishables and non perishables acquired with these funds in Vienna and London, where they settled for life. In 2012, the Mayor of Budapest made Presley an honorary citizen, as well as named a park facing the city’s oldest bridge, after him. iii) On June 28, 1957, now 22, he agreed to appear in the third Shower of the Stars, a benefit towards the construction of St Jude’s Hospital. He did not sing, but attracted some 14,000 donors from the states of TN,MS and AR and, by December of that year, the pledges and contributions were so formidable that work could be started. It is today, the most prestigious hospital in the struggle to benefit children with cancer. Less than seven years later, in February of 1964, he donated to that same hospital FDR’ Presidentail Yatch the USS Potomac, so that they could auctions it, which they did in November of 1964. Those are only three reasons why we should ALSO love him. But there’s more, and none have ANYTHING to do with his career…

It was my pleasure and privilege to stand in the foyer of Graceland Mansion on that day in 1957 when they moved Elvis’s furniture into the house he had just purchased. I was a seventh-grader at the time, and my family lived in the subdivision adjacent to the mansion. His photographs adorned the walls of my bedroom, and he was my all time favorite musician—even at that early age. His cousin lived on the property with him and was my classmate at school, so I got included in outings with Elvis on the lake situated behind the house. I will never forget how kind he was and how he tolerated my silly questions. Now that I have been born by the Spirit of God, I really appreciate his dedication to gospel music, and I tune in on Sunday mornings on the satellite radio in my car when I am traveling!

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WHAT: Mockingbird seeks to connect the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life in fresh and down-to-earth ways.

WHY: Are we called Mockingbird? The name was inspired by the mockingbird’s peculiar gift for mimicking the cries of other birds. In a similar way, we seek to repeat the message we have heard – God’s word of grace and forgiveness.

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